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[Fed-Talk] Compilers

I've discovered that a certain unnamed commercial Z compiler can produce executables that are as much as 2.5x slower than another compiler for the same Z language (at maximum optimization).

It's very hard to show that a G4 or G5 is faster than the same speed Pentium with that sort of handicap.

It's also very hard to justify a particular Z language versus C when dealing that kind of handicap. We're an Z shop not C so I don't have benchmark C codes (they would have to perform the same functions to be useable for us).

Now granted the commercial compiler in question is a year or two old, but I doubt they boosted their speed by 2.5x in one or two years (without a big statement boasting about it, actually the last patch was less than a year ago). I purchased their compiler and another commercial compiler for an Opteron based cluster and didn't see any such difference.

Now I have a better chance of pushing for a G5 based cluster in the future once I get certain codes ported to MPI instead of OpenMP (our OS on the Opteron based cluster corrupted itself and it will take me weeks to figure out how the vendor configured it). At least format to reinstall the OS went away in OS X with the release of OS X 10.2 (precisely when I migrated to OS X).

I have not studied the license agreement to determine if posting comparisons would invalidate my license, etc., so the compiler will remain unnamed as will the language in question (read about UCITA if you really don't understand why).

Michael

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